Related papers: The Asteroid-Comet Continuum
The current properties of small bodies provide important clues to their origin and history. However, how much small bodies were processed by past collisions and to what extent they retain a record of processes that took place during the…
It is often claimed that asteroids' sharing of orbits is the reason they were re-classified from planets to non-planets. A critical review of the literature from the 19th Century to the present shows this is factually incorrect. The…
Over the past three decades, we have witnessed one of the great revolutions in our understanding of the cosmos - the dawn of the Exoplanet Era. Where once we knew of just one planetary system (the Solar system), we now know of thousands,…
Oscillations are observed in all branches of science and culture, ranging from the behavior of ele-mentary particles, atoms, molecules in simple chemical or physical systems or even in complex organisms, up to oscillations of the behavior…
The search for the origin of cosmic rays is as active as ever, mainly driven by new insights provided by recent pieces of observation. Much effort is being channelled in putting the so called supernova paradigm for the origin of galactic…
We develop a phenomenological theory that aims to account for the origin of the large eccentricities of extrasolar planets and that of the small eccentricities in the solar system, the preference for apsidal alignment in non-resonant…
The measurements of cosmic interplanetary dust by the instruments on board the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft contain the dynamical signature of dust generated by Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects, as well as short period Oort Cloud comets and…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…
We discuss problems of planetesimal migration in the emerging Solar System and exoplanetary systems. Protoplanetary disk evolution models and the formation of planets are considered. The formation of the Moon and of the asteroid and…
The absolute magnitude and perihelion distributions of long-period comets are derived, using data from the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey. The results are surprising in three ways. Firstly, the flux of comets through…
Suggestions have been made that asteroid belts may be important both for the existence of life and perhaps even for the evolution of complex life on a planet. Using numerical models for protoplanetary discs we calculate the location of the…
A numerical simulation of the Oort cloud is used to explain the observed orbital distributions and numbers of Jupiter-family and Halley-type short-period comets. Comets are given initial orbits with perihelion distances between 5 and 36 AU,…
The initial conditions, physics, and outcome of planet formation are now constrained by detailed observations of protoplanetary disks, laboratory experiments, and the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. These…
During these last decades, our knowledge of evolutionary and structural properties of stars of different mass and chemical composition is significantly improved. This result has been achieved as a consequence of our improved capability in…
Nature's many varied complex systems (including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society) are islands of order within the increasingly disordered universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological or cultural evolution,…
Comet disintegration proceeds both through sublimation and discrete splitting events. The cross-sectional area of material ejected by a comet may, within days, become many times greater than that of the Earth, making encounters with such…
Small bodies are the remnant building blocks from the time when the planets formed and migrated to their current positions. Their volatile composition and relative abundances serve as time capsules for the formation conditions in the…
Globular clusters are large and dense agglomerate of stars. At variance with smaller clusters of stars, they exhibit signs of some chemical evolution. At least for this reason, they are intermediate between open clusters and massive objects…
Geochemical and astronomical evidence demonstrate that planet formation occurred in two spatially and temporally separated reservoirs. The origin of this dichotomy is unknown. We use numerical models to investigate how the evolution of the…
We point out an intriguing relation between the masses of the transiting planets and their orbital periods. For the six currently known transiting planets, the data are consistent with a decreasing linear relation. The other known…